Rumination + Illustration = Illumination

Do the ends still justify the means when those in control of the means keep changing the ends?

Today is a special day.

It feels like a fresh start.

But then, as Epicurus said, every day should be like that.

Thank you for the likes, the reblogs, the follows xxxx

Kimbap Heaven (김밥 천국), Daegu, 3am, 2007.

Oh dear god when I watched that video and saw the kimchi bokkeumbap, some drool fell out of my mouth onto the desk.

Dude, you missed a bit.

‘Interfaith’, accidental double, Daegu, Korea, 2007.

Speaking of double ex’s, check out these at the Public Domain Review, a site with which I’m having a sudden and torrid affair. 

Hey, 101 followers, how lovely!

Thanks for the follows, the likes, the reblogs, for giving me some of your time and attention. x

National Museum, Gyeongju, Korea, 2004

‘No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen’.

* Minor White

Free online courses offered by leading universities, most of which offer certificates or statements of completion.

‘Life itself is an art, within which creation takes the lonely out of solitary.’

* Rachel Morris

‘Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.’

* Gustave Flaubert

‘My life is created as I narrate, and my memory grows stronger with writing; what I do not put in words on a page will be erased by time … Writing is a long process of introspection; it is a voyage toward the darkest caverns of consciousness, a long, slow meditation. I write feeling my way in silence, and along the way discover particles of truth, small crystals that fit in the palm of one hand and justify my passage through this world.’

* Isabel Allende, from Paula

‘I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.’

* Brenda Ueland

‘Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.’

* Anais Nin

So there’s a weird coincidence: after not thinking about Malcolm in the Middle for years, I just blogged about it yesterday, and today find out that this week the cast had a reunion.

A week or two ago I mentioned that a wild and wonderful coincidence happened to me. What happened was, I was taking the train home from a week’s training in Cardiff and, changing trains in Shrewsbury - having caught the train at Cardiff by the skin of my teeth, a Sliding Doors sort of moment - who should I see on the platform but my London friend the wonderful Paul Wills. Though we both live(d) in Crystal Palace, I never once ran into him there by chance. Yet on a Friday evening in a pretty town in Shropshire ….

We drank cheap wine from the platform’s coffee shop out of plastic cups like a couple of tramps and caught up until my train to Ruabon arrived.

As well as being a very unexpected pleasure, this event was a great relief. See, things like this have often happened to me. There was the time I gave my brother’s Moosehead Beer fridge magnet to some people in Canada and it ended up back in his hands in Australia within 3 or 4 months. The time my dear friend Rob in Calgary found out he had cancer (he’s fine now) and I joked that I’d call the Make a Wish Foundation and arrange a date with his heroine Farrah Fawcett; within 1.5 hours we were acting in a TV movie with her (yes, truly). The very next day I was chatting to some British strangers in a Calgary bookstore, who told me a Small World Story about having just met someone in Alberta who knew a friend of theirs in Colorado. They didn’t believe me at first when I recognised the name and told them that the guy in Colorado was my UK ex’s former boss and climbing partner. And so on, and so on …

These seemingly random and yet magical connections are my favourite thing about life (besides Galaxy chocolate and the love of a good dog), and I was worried that, having recently moved to a small and rather rural North Wales town, they would cease. Oh ye of little faith! The Universe is still ticking along, and I’m still part of it.